Payroll & people — Mutual Africa Pay Help

Payroll & People

Payroll & people

How to set up and run payroll, understand PAYE and UIF, pay employees by bank transfer, send client communications, and use cash flow forecasting in Mutual Africa Pay.

Setting up payroll and adding employees

Mutual Africa Pay's payroll module handles PAYE calculation, UIF deduction, payslip generation, and payment initiation for your employees. Before running your first pay run, you need to add each employee's details to the system.

How to add an employee

Go to Payroll — Select Payroll from the main navigation. Click Add Employee.

Enter personal details — Add the employee's full name, South African ID number or passport number, residential address, and contact details.

Enter employment details — Set the employment start date, job title, department, and employment type — permanent, fixed-term contract, or casual.

Set remuneration — Enter the employee's gross monthly salary or hourly rate. If the employee receives allowances — travel, housing, or meal allowances — add each allowance separately. Mutual Africa Pay uses the total remuneration to calculate PAYE correctly.

Enter the SARS tax reference number — Add the employee's personal income tax reference number. This is required for correct PAYE calculation. If you do not have it, contact your SARS e-Filing account.

Enter banking details — Add the employee's bank name, account number, and branch code. These details are used to initiate salary payments.

Set the pay cycle — Choose whether this employee is paid monthly, weekly, or biweekly.

Employee information is stored securely and accessible only to users with Owner or Accountant roles. Team members with Manager or Viewer roles cannot access payroll data.

Adding recurring deductions or contributions

If an employee has recurring deductions — a medical aid contribution, a pension fund contribution, a garnishee order, or a loan repayment — add these under the employee's Deductions section. Mutual Africa Pay applies them on every pay run automatically and factors them into the PAYE calculation where applicable.

payrollemployeesPAYEsetupHR

Running a monthly pay run

Mutual Africa Pay processes your payroll in a structured four-step workflow — calculate, review, approve, and pay. This process takes less than fifteen minutes for most businesses once employees are set up.

How to run a pay run

Go to Payroll and click New Pay Run — Select the pay period — for monthly payroll, this is the month you are paying.

Review the employee list — Mutual Africa Pay shows all employees included in this pay run. If any employees should be excluded this period — for example, someone on unpaid leave — deselect them.

Enter variable payments if applicable — If any employees are receiving a bonus, commission, or overtime this period that is not part of their standard remuneration, enter the amounts here. Mutual Africa Pay adds them to the gross earnings and recalculates PAYE accordingly.

Review the calculated amounts — Mutual Africa Pay calculates gross pay, PAYE, UIF, any recurring deductions, and net pay for each employee. Review the figures on screen. If anything looks incorrect, check the employee's profile for the remuneration or deduction that needs updating before proceeding.

Approve the pay run — When you are satisfied that all figures are correct, click Approve Pay Run. Payslips are generated automatically for all employees and sent to their email addresses.

Initiate bank payments — After approval, click Initiate Payments. Mutual Africa Pay creates the payment batch for your bank. You will be directed to authorise the payments through your connected banking.

The PAYE and UIF amounts calculated in each pay run need to be remitted to SARS by the seventh of the following month. Mutual Africa Pay calculates the amounts and records the liability on your balance sheet — the actual payment to SARS must be made through your banking or eFiling account.

payrollpay runsalarymonthlyPAYE

Understanding PAYE and UIF calculations

Mutual Africa Pay calculates PAYE and UIF automatically for every employee on every pay run. This article explains how those calculations work so you can verify the figures and understand what your obligations are as an employer.

How PAYE is calculated

PAYE — Pay As You Earn — is income tax deducted from an employee's salary each month on behalf of SARS. Mutual Africa Pay calculates PAYE based on the employee's annual equivalent remuneration, the applicable tax brackets for the current tax year, and any applicable rebates — the primary rebate for all taxpayers under sixty-five, the secondary rebate for taxpayers over sixty-five, and the tertiary rebate for taxpayers over seventy-five.

The calculation annualises the monthly salary, determines the annual tax payable based on the tax tables, subtracts rebates, and divides by twelve to arrive at the monthly PAYE deduction. Variable payments such as bonuses are spread across the remaining months of the tax year to avoid a single month of excessive deduction.

How UIF is calculated

UIF — Unemployment Insurance Fund — requires a one percent contribution from the employee and a matching one percent contribution from the employer, calculated on remuneration up to a monthly earnings ceiling set by the Department of Employment and Labour. Mutual Africa Pay applies the current ceiling automatically. The employee contribution is deducted from net pay and the employer contribution is recorded as an employer cost on the payroll run.

Where to verify the figures

Mutual Africa Pay uses the current SARS tax tables and rebates for the active tax year. Tax tables are updated in the platform at the start of each new tax year — the first of March for South African businesses. If you want to verify the calculation, the SARS website provides the current tax tables and an online tax calculator that should produce the same result as Mutual Africa Pay for a given remuneration level.

If an employee is a non-resident or has a special tax status, consult a tax practitioner before adding them to payroll. Mutual Africa Pay handles standard PAYE calculations but non-standard tax situations may require manual overrides.

PAYEUIFtaxpayrollSARS

Paying employees — bank transfer process

After a pay run is approved in Mutual Africa Pay, salary payments are initiated directly through the platform — Mutual Africa Pay prepares the payment batch and sends it to your connected bank for authorisation. This eliminates the need to log into your banking system separately and manually create individual payment entries for each employee.

How the bank transfer process works

When you click Initiate Payments after approving a pay run, Mutual Africa Pay creates a payment batch containing one transfer per employee — each for the correct net pay amount to their registered bank account. The batch is submitted to your connected bank. Depending on your bank's authorisation requirements, you may receive an approval request in your banking app or be redirected to your bank's payment authorisation page.

Once you authorise the batch in your banking system, payments are released. Depending on the time of submission and your bank's processing schedule, employees typically receive payment on the same business day or the following business day.

What to do if banking details have changed

If an employee notifies you that their banking details have changed, update the details in the employee profile before the next pay run. Do not accept banking detail changes by email or messaging alone — verify the new details directly with the employee by phone before updating them. Banking detail fraud targeting employer payroll systems does occur.

Failed payments

If a payment fails — due to incorrect banking details, an account closure, or a bank processing error — the failed payment appears in your Mutual Africa Pay payroll section with the reason provided by the bank. Correct the details and resubmit the payment for that employee. Failed payments are not retried automatically.

Salary payments initiated through Mutual Africa Pay are real bank transfers. Ensure that sufficient funds are available in the bank account before initiating the payment batch.

salarybank transferpaymentpayrollemployees

Payroll run shows an error — troubleshooting

If Mutual Africa Pay displays an error when you attempt to run or approve payroll, this guide covers the most common causes and how to resolve them.

Missing employee tax reference number

Mutual Africa Pay requires a valid SARS income tax reference number for each employee to calculate PAYE correctly. If an employee's tax reference number is missing or incorrectly formatted, the pay run will flag it. Go to the employee profile, add or correct the tax reference number, and retry the pay run.

Missing banking details

If an employee does not have banking details on their profile, Mutual Africa Pay cannot include them in the bank payment batch. Add the banking details to the employee profile and retry. If the employee is paid by cash or cheque rather than bank transfer, mark this on their profile so Mutual Africa Pay excludes them from the bank transfer process.

Remuneration amount not set

If a new employee was added without a salary or hourly rate set, the pay run cannot calculate their PAYE or net pay. Open the employee profile, go to the Remuneration section, and set the applicable rate.

Tax year mismatch

If you are running payroll for a period that spans a tax year change — for example, processing March salaries at the start of the new South African tax year — Mutual Africa Pay will prompt you to confirm that it should use the new tax year tables. Confirm this before proceeding.

Pay run already processed for this period

If a pay run for the selected period has already been approved, Mutual Africa Pay will not allow a duplicate. If you need to make corrections to an approved pay run, contact the Mutual Africa Pay support team — reversal and correction of processed payroll requires review to ensure tax reporting integrity.

payrollerrortroubleshootPAYEfix

Sending bulk emails to clients

Mutual Africa Pay's email marketing feature uses your existing client list to send professional communications — announcements, promotions, newsletters, payment reminders, and statement notifications — directly from within the platform. Because your client data is already in Mutual Africa Pay, there is no need to export contacts to a separate email marketing tool.

How to create and send an email campaign

Go to People, then Email Marketing — Click New Campaign.

Name the campaign — Add an internal name for the campaign — this is for your reference and does not appear in the email.

Select your recipients — Choose All Clients, or use the filter options to segment — by client type, outstanding balance status, last purchase date, or plan. Only clients with a valid email address on their profile will receive the email.

Write your email content — Enter the subject line and the email body. Mutual Africa Pay supports basic text formatting. Your business name and logo from your organisation profile are included in the email header automatically.

Preview the email — Click Preview to see how the email will appear to recipients. Check that personalisation tokens — client name, business name — are populated correctly.

Send or schedule — Click Send Now to deliver immediately, or Schedule to select a specific date and time for delivery.

Tracking campaign results

After sending, go to the campaign record to view delivery results — total sent, delivered, opened, and any failed deliveries. Use open rate data to refine future subject lines and sending times.

Mutual Africa Pay email marketing operates within applicable email legislation including South Africa's POPIA requirements. Only send marketing communications to clients who have consented to receive them. Clients can unsubscribe from marketing emails at any time — unsubscribe requests are processed automatically.

email marketingcampaignsclientsbulk emailcommunication

Understanding cash flow forecasting

Mutual Africa Pay's cash flow intelligence feature provides a forward-looking view of your business's cash position — showing projected inflows and outflows for the next thirty, sixty, and ninety days based on your actual financial data. Unlike a static cash flow spreadsheet, the forecast in Mutual Africa Pay updates automatically as your financial position changes.

How the forecast is built

Mutual Africa Pay constructs the cash flow forecast from four data sources. Outstanding invoices with due dates contribute expected inflows — adjusted based on each client's historical payment patterns. Recurring expenses and payroll runs contribute expected outflows on their scheduled dates. Overdue receivables are weighted according to the likelihood of collection based on aging. And your current bank balance, pulled from your open banking connection or last reconciliation, is the starting point for the projection.

Reading the forecast

The cash flow forecast is displayed as a chart on your dashboard on Summit and Enterprise plans. The horizontal axis shows time — days and weeks ahead. The vertical axis shows your projected cash balance. A line above zero means your business is projected to have cash available. A line approaching or dipping below zero is a warning that a cash shortfall is projected for that period.

Cash shortfall alerts

When Mutual Africa Pay's forecast identifies that your projected cash balance will fall below zero — or below a minimum threshold you set — it sends you an alert. This alert comes with enough lead time to take action: accelerating collection from overdue clients, deferring non-critical payments, or arranging short-term financing before the gap becomes a crisis.

Limitations of the forecast

The cash flow forecast is a projection based on available data — it is not a guarantee of future cash position. Unexpected expenses, delayed client payments, and sudden revenue changes will affect actual outcomes. Use the forecast as a planning tool and an early warning system, not as a definitive statement of what will happen.

Connect your bank account via open banking to maximise the accuracy of the cash flow forecast. A live bank balance is a more reliable starting point than a manually reconciled position.

cash flowforecastintelligenceplanningshortfall